• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2009

Recently microscale biofluid flows have been receiving large attention in various research areas. However, most conventional imaging techniques are unsatisfactory due to difficulties encountered in the visualization of microscale biological flows. Recent advances in optics and digital image processing techniques have made it possible to develop several advanced micro-PIV/PTV techniques. They can be used to get quantitative velocity field information of various biofluid flows from visualized images of tracer particles. In this paper, as new advanced micro-PIV techniques suitable for biofluid flow analysis, the basic principle and typical applications of the time-resolved micro-PIV and X-ray micro-PIV methods are explained. As a 3D velocity field measurement technique for measuring microscale flows, holographic micro-PTV method is introduced. These advanced PIV/PTV techniques can be used to reveal the basic physics of various microscale biological flows and will play an important role in visualizing veiled biofluid flow phenomena, for which conventional methods have many difficulties to analyze.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.69-75
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• 2006

The microbubbles were used in various fields, such as turbulent control, drag reduction, material science and life science. The X-ray PTV using X-ray micro-imaging technique was employed to mea-sure the size and velocity of micro-bubbles moving in an opaque tube simultaneously. Micro-bubbles of $10{\sim}60{\mu}m$ diameter moving upward in an opaque tube (${\phi}$=2.7mm) were tested. Due to the different refractive indices of water and air, phase contrast X-ray images clearly show the exact size and shape of over-lapped microbubbles. In all of the working fluids tested (deionized water, tap water, 0.01 and 0.10M NaCl solutions), the measured terminal velocity of the microbubbles rising through the solution was proportional to the square of the bubble diameter. The rising velocity was increased with increasing mole concentration. The microbubble can be useful as contrast agent or tracer in life science and biology. The X-ray PTV technique should be able to extract useful information on the behavior of various bio/microscale fluid flows that are not amenable to analysis using conventional methods.